Exodus by Leon Uris

    I followed up Here Where We Live Is Our Country with Exodus, a completely different book. Uris tells the story of the founding of Israel and the aliyah of Jews across the world to Israel before and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The book certainly has a perspective. It is just as zionist as Here Where We Live is antizionist. I would say that Exodus is a better book in general, although I think it benefits from embracing historical fiction, written in a very compelling way, whereas Here Where We Live was stuck with real events and real people, and couldn't use fiction to fill gaps.

    My biggest criticism of Exodus is that it is just so cheesy. It is over the top in making the British characters half-Jewish, the Americans as big Israel-lovers, and the Israelis as the toughest men you've ever seen. Describing the main character, Ari Ben Canaan (later played by Paul Newman," his love interest, the American Kitty Fremont, says "This Ben Canaan doesn't act like any Jew I've ever met. You know what I mean. You don't particularly think of them in a capacity like his ... or fighters ... things of that sort." It perpetuates the classic propaganda of the Israelis saving the land from infertility and gets absolutely ridiculous in demonizing the Arabs, especially reaching the latter third or quarter of the book, when the Arab-Israeli war occurs. Uris notes that the Arabs are "experts in building on other people's civilizations" and had only built one city in a thousand years in Palestine. Sometimes it feels like Uris is criticizing Israel, but he mainly uses the Maccabees, a fictionalized version of Irgun or Lehi, to make that criticism, putting these words in the mouth of one: "Nothing we do, right or wrong, can ever compare to what has been done to the Jewish people." I would say that that group obviously gained a huge amount of power since the book was written. Certainly, modern-day Israeli lawmakers aren't often heard quoting fictional character Barak Ben Canaan: "International law is the thing which the evil ignore and the righteous refuse to enforce."

    What the book gets is that the formation of Israel was all about push factors from Europe. Middle Eastern Jews didn't found Israel because they weren't pushed there like European Jews were. The young sabras and immigrants to Israel are all pushed there by pogroms or the Holocaust, respectively. I think the story of Karen Hansen/Clement is very well told as a metaphor for the Jewish people. She is orphaned in Europe, and seeks out an adoptive family--Christians in Denmark. But she can never truly belong to them, and has to go in search of a new family in Europe. And she cannot even be adopted by Kitty Fremont, an American who wants to save her. She, and all of Israel, have to save themselves. I thought it was a little heavy-handed, like the rest of the book, but it was well-done. Uris made his point. 

    All in all, Exodus is a well-written and entertaining book, but it's propaganda value is a match for its entertainment value. It can be so over the top that, by the end, it took me out of the book because it was so unsubtle.